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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26588431">Linger</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu'>Nununununu</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Caretaking, Character Death, E-rated for consensual sexual content in flashbacks, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, POV K-2SO, Please don't copy to another site, References past violence, Robot/Human Relationships, Trigger warning in author notes, Unreliable Narrator</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:08:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,598</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26588431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>K-2 had told Cassian time and again not to go alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cassian Andor/K-2SO</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Linger</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Trigger warning - includes suicidal ideation. The major character death doesn't happen on-screen, but the fic deals with the recent aftermath of it. Includes not especially detailed description of taking care of the deceased (though your mileage may vary on this). There are non-graphic mentions of blood and a single brief reference to non-specified other fluid.</p><p>This was me working through some things - please don't read if it might be triggering &lt;3</p><p>(Update: slightly edited)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>“K-2, it’s – You might not want to go in there,” Bodhi can’t meet his gaze. The lines on his face appear deeper than usual, his skin paler, something even more hollow than usual under his eyes, his cheeks.</p><p>“I certainly do,” K-2SO can’t understand why they’re lingering in the corridor. Still, Cassian had come to like the man and, towards the end, had counted him as a friend.</p><p>It’s possible K-2 had felt similarly. He has disabled his emotional subroutines and can’t seem to access certain memory files for some reason, so he mostly has just theory to go by now. It doesn’t matter.</p><p>“Move yourself or I will move you,” K-2 informs Bodhi, not unreasonably, his vocabulator even.</p><p>Twisting his hands together as he shifts from foot to foot in front of the mortu– in front of the door, the premature wrinkles on Bodhi’s face deepen by another nineteen percent as he draws a shallow breath in.</p><p>“He suffered,” He says this lowly enough K-2 has to consciously turn up his audio receptors in order to hear, “I’m sorry.”</p><p>His analytical programming informs him that, if his emotional subroutines were engaged, he would wish that he hadn’t.</p><p>This, too, is of no matter. Not yet, anyway. Later, when K-2 is alone in the droid bay – not <em>alone</em>, but as alone as one of countless droids with no personal rights can be – Later, when he is alone with nothing more than his own programming, such things will matter a great deal.</p><p>He considers setting up a partition to block them behind. Considers permanently deleting his feelings.</p><p>Doesn’t.</p><p>He considers, in the eight point five seconds it takes for Bodhi to finally decide to step partially out of the way, deleting his own selfhood.</p><p>This would be ridiculous. Cassian would never forgive him. <em>He</em> would never forgive him. His emotional subroutines are disabled. So why is he –?</p><p>It is of no matter.</p><p>“Do you want me to come in there with you?” Bodhi’s voice is still low, hesitant, but more easily audible now. Soft. Some organic feeling there that K-2 is unequipped to deal with.</p><p>He <em>does</em> like Bodhi, he is peripherally certain. So why should he want to scream at him?</p><p>“No thank you,” K-2 says politely. Puts his hand on the man’s thin shoulder – carefully, carefully, and yet Bodhi still represses a flinch; ah yes, eighty-two percent of the time he dislikes touching. <em>K-2 should have known this</em> – and steers him aside the rest of the way.</p><p>Then he lets go of that shoulder – gently, gently.</p><p>There is no reason why his movement routines should be threatening to glitch.</p><p>“Do you – do you want me to wait out here?” Bodhi’s voice is almost a gasp. Not because of the touch; K-2 is seventy-six percent certain. But because of Cassian –</p><p>It is understandable. Of course. Bodhi is upset.</p><p>“No thank you,” K-2 therefore says politely again. He waits until Bodhi nods – Cassian liked him, respected him; K-2 also likes him. Liked. Likes. He can’t be sure – he is sure –</p><p>He should turn on his emotional subroutines.</p><p>No. There is no need.</p><p>Opening the door to the mortuar– Opening the door, stepping into the room beyond it and then closing the door again should almost come as a relief. Almost. He is alone now (he is a droid. He is never alone. Even though he has disconnected himself from the others, there is a hum of the synthetic network all around him everywhere on the Rebel base. Everywhere except here.</p><p>There is a space here, like a dead spot. Droids do not touch it. Why would they?)</p><p>There is a space. There is also a table – a metal examination table – a table in the centre of the –</p><p>In the centre. There is a table. It is very cold in the room. The cold doesn’t affect K-2; he can’t feel it, as such – his sensors simply inform him of its existence. There should be no reason why he should <em>want</em> to feel it. He <em>doesn’t</em> want to feel it.</p><p>Why would he?</p><p>Possibly in one of the currently inaccessible memory files, he possesses data regarding the sensation of cold, linked together with his emotional subroutines. That he used to have a reaction to it – <em>has</em> a reaction to it, just not now. An opinion.</p><p>He has the suspicion he disliked it, although this seems irrational. While the cold in this room is at the low end of what organics, especially humans, can bear comfortably and without harm, it is not great enough to affect K-2’s internal or external workings. He can survive it easily.</p><p>There should be no reason why he should find it distressing. He <em>doesn’t</em> find it distressing. This is in and of itself distressing, somehow, although it is also not.</p><p>His programming has never made much sense, not since Cassian – and then K-2 – initially enabled him to become <em>him</em>.</p><p>How could he have considered deleting it?</p><p>(He is still considering deleting it)</p><p>“I told you not to go alone,” His vocabulator sounds too loud in the quiet of this cold room, empty except for the table and its occupant, and the neat rows of doors lining the wall opposite, rows upon rows. Even the quiet somehow seems <em>too</em> quiet in this room.</p><p>Clearly his audio receptors are also malfunctioning.</p><p>“I told you not to go alone,” K-2 therefore repeats. He also takes a step forwards. Why hadn’t he already taken a step forwards? Why is he –</p><p>He is not hesitating. He approaches the body on the table. Cassian. He approaches Cassian on the table.</p><p>Someone, perhaps Bodhi, has placed a sheet over him. The old worn sheet from Cassian’s narrow bunk in his assigned room here on the base, the one he rarely uses – used – unless K-2 drags – dragged or otherwise bribed – him there to sleep.</p><p>He fucked Cassian on this sheet too, several times – if he had access to all his memory files, he would know how many. Dragged it onto the floor along with the man’s thin blanket and applied all his analytical programming towards making Cassian gasp and writhe. Which he had done, very satisfactorily.</p><p>At least K-2 thinks it was satisfactorily. He hopes it was. Hoped. If his emotional subroutines are disabled, are his feelings therefore also in past tense?</p><p>There is a body on the table. Cassian. Partially covered by his sheet, perhaps in some organic attempt to make him appear as if he is sleeping.</p><p>He does not appear as if he is sleeping. He never liked to sleep lying down, after all, and definitely not on his back; K-2 doesn’t need to access those memory files to know that the rare times Cassian would sleep for more than a few fretful hours, he was either passed out in the co-pilot’s seat of their little shuttle or leaning against K-2’s shoulder.</p><p>His systems ping with the echo of a weight against his shoulder now –</p><p>No. This is irrational. K-2 continues his visual inspection.</p><p>There are bruises, of course. Cassian was often bruised in the line of duty; he had a number of poorly healed breaks and fractures he pretended didn’t trouble him. K-2’s hands had reset some of those. A very different task to the previous use of his hands, while under Imperial control. Cassian had come to even let him massage those painful places occasionally – durasteel thumbs soothing the aching wrist, easing out the hurt from an ankle that never quite wanted to bend right, whatever Cassian did to conceal and compensate for this.</p><p>He lived a lot of his life in pain. He died in pain as well. Bodhi’s confirmation had not been necessary; K-2 can see this for himself –</p><p>No.</p><p>Cassian’s hands are folded unnaturally on top of his belly – ah yes. They have been fastened there; a discreet loop of slender rope tied around his wrists to keep them in place. K-2 hates the fact Cassian’s wrists are tied –<em> who tied them – he hates –</em></p><p>His emotional subroutines are disabled.</p><p>The sheet seems a mockery, somehow. Inexplicable. It is as if someone – Chirrut? Possibly Jyn? – had wanted to offer comfort. Modesty, perhaps. Cassian is beyond these things.</p><p>Beneath the sheet, someone – one of the organic medics? – has removed Cassian’s clothes. K-2’s memory files contain – contained – many instances of times <em>he</em> removed Cassian’s clothes. They should have let him do it.</p><p>Of course they didn’t let him do it. Why would they? He’s only been able to gain access to the mortuary– this room because Bodhi is still pretending to be present in it.</p><p>Cassian would have hated having a stranger undress him. Although he allowed strangers to undress him during at least twelve separate missions that K-2 is aware of. Was aware of. Some of the information regarding them is still available to him. Strangers’ hands moving across Cassian’s skin, Cassian obliged to smile and laugh to keep up his cover while K-2 stood and played bodyguard.</p><p>He had hated playing bodyguard (hated strangers touching Cassian) unless he’d been able to partake in acts of violence towards the people who undressed and touched Cassian.</p><p>He should not want now, viscerally, to partake in acts of violence to this most recent stranger to undress and touch Cassian.</p><p>He touches Cassian himself at this point, almost harshly. Almost enough to jostle one of Cassian’s hands out of its unnatural position on his belly. Would his skin tear–?</p><p>K-2 has dealt with Rebel prisoners – and the bodies of Rebel prisoners – enough during his time with the Empire to know the answer to such a question.</p><p>Cassian is not a Rebel prisoner. Is he?</p><p>He was.</p><p>“You should not have gone alone. I told you.”</p><p>Someone has also washed Cassian’s skin clean of blood. Tried to. K-2’s optics are easily able to identify areas the organic missed. Traces left. There are the wounds, of course, but they are no longer bleeding. And Cassian is cold.</p><p>K-2 cannot explain in any sense whatsoever why he should experience surprise within his circuits due to this simple fact that Cassian is cold. The room is cold. Cassian is dead. Therefore he is –</p><p>Cold. His skin also feels –</p><p>It no longer feels like part of him. Someone, presumably that same organic, has also attempted to wash Cassian’s hair and has styled it poorly. At least they didn’t attempt to shave his facial hair. K-2 would have had to hunt them down and –</p><p>Nothing. And nothing. He has no master now. He has no Cassian now. Cassian was never his master, except on paperwork Cassian raged about in the privacy of their – no, <em>his</em> – K-2 has determined not to think ‘their’. It was never ‘their’ – room. In the privacy of his room.</p><p>In the privacy of his room, Cassian was K-2’s lover and K-2 was his. This is –</p><p>K-2 is growing tired of the word ‘no’. But the alternative seems to be something much like that earlier temptation to scream.</p><p>It does not take long to locate a metal bowl – he could extrapolate its normal usage, but refrains – and to clean it within acceptable parameters, and fill it with warm water. It does not take long to locate soap and shampoo.</p><p>Moving sections at a time, keeping key areas covered – the worst of the wounds and body parts considered private by organics, even if K-2 has seen every part of Cassian multiple times already – he washes his lover. Ex-lover? Does it mean Cassian is no longer his lover, now he is dead?</p><p>Of course it does.</p><p>As such, does it mean K-2 must reclassify the word? Does Cassian’s death make him, in more than one way, ex?</p><p>A painful loop is attempting to establish itself within K-2’s systems, distress rebounding off distress and magnifying it with each pass. His thoughts are no longer entirely making sense.</p><p>Has he been not ‘making sense’ for some time? Since he was informed of – Since he was informed. Has anything been making sense?</p><p>Of course it has. Cassian always knew he would die in service of the Rebellion. K-2 did not need his advanced analytical programming to know this too.</p><p>(But still –)</p><p>His emotional subroutines are disabled.</p><p>He washes his lover – Cassian’s skin; his hair. Finger combs the latter into as close an approximation of Cassian’s preferred style – in the times the man wasn’t obliged to wear it otherwise due to undercover missions – and afterwards resentfully rearranges the sheet.</p><p>He wishes they had left Cassian his clothes.</p><p>How could they have left Cassian his clothes? The wounds that aren’t – weren’t? – bruises easily imply that his clothing would have been predominantly ruined and likely contained harmful substances to still-living organics. It must have been burned.</p><p>At least K-2 has been able to remove some of those traces of blood that had still been visible on Cassian’s skin. Some of. Not all of. This is immensely troubling, but –</p><p>He doesn’t want to remember it. That when they destroy Cassian’s body – because it will be destroyed; Cassian is not only dead, but will also be destroyed – some of those traces of blood will remain.</p><p>The wounds will remain there also, and the blood there within. Does Cassian have anything else left within his body? K-2 remembers, during his time with the Empire, being obliged to transport bodies down to the crematorium. Some of them would expel fluids when moved. Some of them would –</p><p>No. Horror claws at his circuits when he thinks of Cassian –</p><p>No.</p><p>It doesn’t matter. Cassian is dead – why should such a thing matter? K-2 has never before entertained such an organic concept as <em>squeamishness</em>. He has disabled his emotional subroutines.</p><p>Why is he on the floor on his knees? Time has –</p><p>Time has jumped. Strange. His internal systems register the blip. He was thinking of Cassian – of Cassian’s body being destroyed and –</p><p>Here he is, down on his knees. It must have made a noise, his descent. He must straighten up this room, clean out the bowl, replace the cleaning products he used, before the usual organics who work here come and question him.</p><p>There is no one to stop the Rebel techs reprogramming him now, regardless of Cassian’s wishes – they tried often enough, after all, while he was alive. Bodhi would attempt to prevent it, K-2 is relatively certain – Chirrut and Baze. Jyn. Without key memories, it is difficult to predict.</p><p>Why did he refuse himself access to such memories again?</p><p>He wants to remember Cassian –</p><p>
  <em>Gasping, his hard cock hot and sticky against the cool metal of K-2’s palm; the man whining low in his throat as K-2 wrapped his fingers around it, lightly sliding his thumb up the length of it slowly, slowly, just  a tease. Cassian clinging to him, pressing his flushed face in against K-2’s shoulder as he fought to keep himself from thrusting; a rare loss of control that set all of K-2’s circuits alight –</em>
</p><p>He wants to remember him.</p><p>
  <em>“I’ll be fine.” Of course Cassian would say this in response to all of K-2’s doubts, all of his warnings, all of his predictions. “It’ll be fine, Kay.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“It won’t be fine,” Sighing, K-2 is already giving up on convincing him. He has said and he has said and Cassian will not listen. So now he is turning away. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He will always hate himself that he turned away.</em>
</p><p>It wasn’t fine. Of course it wasn’t fine.</p><p>
  <em>Chirrut senses it first, and then Jyn goes silent as Mon Mothma appears in the doorway, stopping herself halfway through a punch in the practice ring, the motion left unfinished. Bodhi’s hands go into his hair as if in preparation to tug, his shoulders hunching as he curls in on himself protectively where he sits. His gun half disassembled on the table before him, Baze goes completely inexpressive. They all know it is bad news.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What else can it be?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m sorry,” Mon Mothma only then speaks. Just visible in the corridor behind her, his gaze already averted, Draven turns away.</em>
</p><p><em>“</em>I’m not sorry,” K-2 says now.</p><p>Of course he is sorry. He is so sorry he could tear the world apart in search of Cassian, just to find his lover still not in it. He wants wants wants wants <em>needs</em> to find the people responsible for killing his lover and to grind them into nothing, to turn them into ashes to powder to fragments to –</p><p>His language processes are failing him. This hasn’t happened before.</p><p>He wants –</p><p>A quiet knock on the door.</p><p>“K-2?” Bodhi’s voice. Quiet. Muffled. “I’m so sorry, but –”</p><p>Of course. It is time to leave. K-2 always knew it would come – the time to leave.</p><p>He should say something better. ‘I love you’? That’s for organics. Some of them. Cassian never said it to him.</p><p>
  <em>“You’re all right, Kay,” Cassian had spluttered, laughing, rapping his knuckles against K-2’s chassis, while the droid stared at him in open surprise.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You are capable of laughter?” Something was clearly wrong with the organic. Cassian had never displayed such behaviour in the six months of their acquaintance – and he very rarely did, in the three years they had together that followed. “And expressing a positive opinion?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>About him?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>K-2 couldn’t deny the pride and pleasure that swelled through his circuits. Still, it didn’t mean he was going to admit to them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Here, I will take your temperature. Clearly you have been infected with some disgusting illness.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m fine, Kay.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This was an almost unheard of example in which this assertion was the truth. And –</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You are ‘all right’ too, Cassian.” It had taken K-2 five months and three days to return the sentiment, closing his fingers carefully, gently over Cassian’s shoulder as he did so.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“M-Mm,” Cassian had gone uncharacteristically – not shy. He was never shy, unless it was as part of a ruse. Even then K-2 could see through it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But Cassian had had a reaction, anyway, to K-2’s words or to his hand on his shoulder, and K-2’s processes raced to analyse this new data on his friend, even as he wondered at his own reaction to it.</em>
</p><p>Perhaps he should say ‘goodbye’. It seemed –</p><p>No. More likely he should say nothing at all. Droids didn’t say anything to one another when they were about to shut down, after all – if they had the opportunity. Although they did sometimes exchange information – small data packets shunted from the one about to be terminated to whoever would receive them, or just dispersed generally on the network.</p><p>Cassian couldn’t transmit a data packet. Cassian couldn’t do anything now. K-2 could perhaps –</p><p>There wasn’t anything of Cassian’s he could take. Wanted to take. The thought of keeping a few strands of the man’s hair, perhaps, was –</p><p>No.</p><p>(He would always regret the fact he didn’t keep a few strands of his lover’s hair, even as, on another level, his circuits rebelled at the idea. But still. The fact he had had the opportunity and did not take it felt in some inexplicable way like losing Cassian all over again. Yet another way in which Cassian was lost to him)</p><p>Turning his back on Cassian and walking in silence out of the mortuary was –</p><p>No.</p><p>(K-2 <em>hated</em> that word)</p><p>In the end, as his audio sensors identified Bodhi shifting in preparation to reluctantly knock on the door and issue another reminder, K-2 placed his fingertips very lightly on Cassian’s forehead.</p><p>
  <em>Cassian would kiss him like that – K-2’s fingers. Moaning around them as he drew two deep into his mouth, his eyelids fluttering – Grazing his lips against them in a lighter, closed-mouth kiss – Lapping at one, his gaze dark and intense on K-2’s as he hollowed his cheeks in preparation to suck – Catching hold of K-2’s hand as they parted to go separate ways and, unable to use his mouth in the hangar bay, taking advantage of other organics’ distraction to quickly squeeze his fingers around K-2’s palm. This too, to K-2, felt like a kiss.</em>
</p><p>There should be words for this. There should be something to say to Cassian, something fitting, for the last time. Something that isn’t ‘I told you so’. Something that isn’t ‘you predicted this, we both did, and so I hope you are satisfied’. Something that isn’t ‘I hope it was worth it’.</p><p>(It will never, ever be worth it)</p><p>Cassian’s forehead is cold. His skin feels wrong. At least it is cleaner than it was. At least his hair is –</p><p>There is no time. No time to catalogue any more of his lover; no time to log the wounds he cannot think about – not now, not yet. No time to stand and scream and scream –</p><p>They are out of time. They have – had – always been out of time.</p><p>“Cassian –” K-2’s vocabulator sounds unfamiliar as well. It’s not only Cassian, in being dead, who has changed.</p><p>Outside the mortuary, Bodhi is doing his utmost to delay the increasingly irritated organic assigned to this room. Soon they will override him and fetch reinforcements. Soon they will come to take K-2 away.</p><p>If – when – they deem him defective, will they terminate him? Would he be able to convince the others left of <em>Rogue One</em> not to interfere?</p><p>Cassian would never forgive him. But Cassian is dead.</p><p>“<em>Cassian</em>,” K-2 <em>is</em> screaming inside, where no one can hear. But this is it. This is all they have left. This is the very last moment he has with his lover. He is –</p><p>He is grateful, that they have this.</p><p>(Although he so nearly cannot for the agony – he<em> cannot</em> –)</p><p>He speaks.</p><p> </p>
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